Beyond Small, Medium and Large

Few things exist in our culture that are more
universally recognizable than letterforms. Their instant accessibility
to a mass audience explains why they are so frequently utilized to
create symbols and logotypes, and why they are so important to the
education of graphic design students. Before we learn our ABCs, letters
are abstract shapes with no meaning. As the letters become recognizable,
the individual forms and structures become invisible to the eye.
Familiarity breeds indifference, and the unique forms that define each
letter are replaced with a name for identification, eventually revealing
words, phrases, and sentences. This ritual, our earliest contact with
graphic design, is the path to literacy, but it fails to develop and
cultivate our eyes. The question is how does one transcend immediate
recognition and replace it with observation and perception?

Creating letterforms by hand provides the perfect means for achieving
this goal and, in the process, learning important basic design
principles—principles that are available only through the direct
experience of making. Unlike most design courses that strive for
diversity, the focus in this context is exclusively on learning basic
formal properties consistent with existing traditional alphabets. This
being the case, why not save time and use the computer to produce the
letterforms?

The computer’s capability to produce perfect letterforms of any font and
size is an important resource for designers. This perfection, however,
assumes a certain authority that is antithetical to seeing and to visual
thinking. Every letter in the alphabet has formal idiosyncrasies that
require visual adjustments to compensate for mathematical certainty. The
computer’s capacity to make a square with four perfectly equal sides,
for instance, accurately reflects the definition of a square that
appears in the dictionary.

Mathematical perfection, however, ignores the fact that the visual world
relies on imagination and illusion. The graphic designer needs a foot
in both worlds and must reconcile these polar opposites. The fact is
that the vertical sides of a square must be longer in length than the
horizontal sides to create a “visual square.” Unless the appropriate
compensation is made, the computer can only produce squares that appear
too short. One may ask, how long must the vertical edges be in order to
appear correct? The answer is, “Until the sides look equal.”

There is no formula that I know of. Finding the correct length is
accomplished through trial and error, accompanied by careful
observation, evaluation and judgment. To reach this conclusion, however,
one must be curious and confident enough to question the precision that
comes so easily with the machine. Unless students are made aware of
this visual phenomenon and encouraged to exercise their capacity to
observe, doubting the authority of technology is virtually impossible.

Letterforms have a direct relation to geometry; designing a square
presents the same issues as designing a letter. The computer can produce
letters with strokes guaranteed to be exactly the same width, but
unless visual adjustments are made, the strokes will not possess the
same visual weight. Painting a letter as simple as a sans serif capital H
offers challenges for determining important visual phenomena, such as
the relationship between horizontal and vertical strokes. For instance,
how thick must the horizontal stroke be to appear the same weight as the
two vertical strokes? Where must it be positioned to appear in the
center of the verticals (the visual center)? If both vertical strokes
are mathematically the same width, are they visually equal?

New questions and more complex visual adjustments are required for
designing letterforms that contain diagonals and curves. When students
transcend recognition of a letter by name and begin to see it
abstractly—the H, for example, as two vertical strokes connected by a
single horizontal stroke—they immediately extend their understanding to
the E, F, L and T. At first glance, the results appear like replicas of
Univers or Helvetica, but they are never an exact match. Students begin
to realize they are creating unique forms of their own that occupy the
fertile creative space that lies in between presets offered by type
fonts. This new awareness gives them the confidence and permission to
search beyond default givens for a more individual voice. Through this
process, students learn to trust their eyes and their judgment. They
experience the weight of responsibility and the reward of
accomplishment.

“One may ask, ‘how long must the vertical edges be in order to appear correct?’ The answer is, ‘Until the sides look equal’.”

Taking things for granted confirms preconceived assumptions and
eliminates the proclivity for further examination. During an interview
in the late ‘70s, the philosopher Mortimer Adler was discussing his book
How to Read a Book. Mistakenly, I assumed he must have been
speaking about a book for children. Baffled by why a brilliant thinker
would write a book for adults about such a pedestrian subject, I read
the book.

As it turns out, there are numerous ways to read a book, and reading
this one sparked important insights. One of the many benefits achieved
through painting letterforms by hand is that it teaches students how to
work. This begins with an introduction to tools and materials. Being
accustomed to the immediate gratification from instantaneous results
using the computer, students begin in a tentative manner. The quality of
their first pencil sketches varies widely and reveal important
information that teachers can use to help them improve. They confront
new problems when they begin using paint, their eyes often only inches
away from the work, painstakingly trying to paint a perfect edge. The
quality of work changes immediately when they realize that spending time
making a razor edge is an irrelevant diversion that prohibits them from
seeing the form as a whole. Aware that a sketch is not a result in
itself but a path to discovery, students stop viewing the sketch as
precious; the concern for surface perfection is replaced with a desire
to find the correct form. The studio comes alive with sketches pinned to
the walls made with a variety of materials. Realizing that a certain
distance from the sketch is required to see it properly, students no
longer remain seated at their desks but stand in front of their work at
arm’s length, holding separate brushes for black and white paint. This
activity creates a rhythm in the room: Students approach their work to
add paint, then retreat to observe and evaluate the result.

Through the process of painting numerous variations, students become
conscious that counter forms are not leftover transparent holes but
crucial elements in designing letterforms. Awareness of the essential
role that negative space plays in design changes how students think as
well as how they see and experience their surroundings. The alphabet is a
complex design system of inherent formal relationships with rules that
provide a means to evaluate work objectively. By understanding these
relationships, students can experiment with new and unique letterform
combinations that are not possible using existing type fonts. Most
importantly, they experience the benefits of having physical interaction
with their work and the rich potential they posses as individuals to
create unique and unpredictable results.

In a world where information about virtually everything is available
instantly, it is rewarding to discover things that exist but remain
hidden, invisible, unless perceived through observation. As we move
forward, it is important to preserve the valuable human component to the
process of making and visual thinking. While technology expands its
influence on traditional means of thought and design, the role of the
graphic designer will continue to evolve in new and unpredictable
directions.

The rapid pace of these changes makes determining the most effective
curriculum and identifying qualified teachers a moving target.
Department chairs will become more tempted to eliminate courses deemed
unnecessary in a digital environment. Before eliminating classes that
may seem obsolete, design educators will have to carefully weigh what is
gained and what is lost in the process.

About the Author: William Longhauser is a graphic designer and educator living in Los Angeles. He has recently founded the Outside Institute (OI), housed within the UCLA Extension Program. The OI will function as a working educational laboratory for experimentation and discovery through the direct experience of making-a physical process that involves thinking, drawing and working with materials.